i'm fasting this week. not because i have a political cause or because i want to fit in to that Hello Kitty themed two-piece for summer, but merely for personal exploration. to see what it's like to be hungry, see what your body does when you stop giving it calories. i know what the science says, i just kind of want to know how it feels.

and more than that, it's about adding footnotes to what otherwise might be a boring stretch of lifetime. two years from now at a party you're not going to tell the cute girl standing by the shrimp bar about a jerk who cut you off in traffic or an above-average cup of coffee you had. because honestly, those are the most exciting things that happen to us on an average day. no, you're going to tell her about your skydiving trip, how you interpret the works of Dostoevsky, or the crazy prank you played at your brother's wedding. and while it's well known that the entirety of human achievment was all an attempt to impress chicks, this kind of stuff is good for you, too. milestones, new experiences, limits pushed and frontiers explored. you don't want to have to infer accomplishment from years of deadening toil, you want to be able to reach back and grab hold of concrete moments and how you felt with their undertaking.

so for my first fasting update, i would like to say i feel...hungry. i also feel like the United States military should be reduced in capacity to where it could only wage one serious regioinal conflict at a time; UN forces and our allies' standing armies would pick up the slack (if they're not on our side in said conflict, we're probably in the wrong to begin with). but mostly hungry.

my coworkers are back at it again, flattershopping me straight in to drag and other equally compromising positions. i could give you the context, but taking it raw elevates to a whole new level of funny.

i was at work the other day talking to craig, and for some reason i was lamenting the lack of different stages in the human cycle; basically that we only really have two, pre-puberty and adulthood. craig was of course quick to correct me and add the third, including the menopause/decline period of our lives. and from that it dawned on me: menopause is a relatively recent discovery. it wasn't until 12,000 years ago that humanity began to exhibit the capacity to live in to and beyond middle age, and it started to make me wonder what other stages of human development we would find should our lifespans continue to increase(especially with all the anti-aging research that is taking place now that the human genome has been cracked). just imagine that at 150, a new stage is revealed: the decay of old age clears away and people develop super-strength, flight, the ability to shoot frickin' laser beams from their eyeballs. a legion of ultra-elderly super heroes. if that comes to pass i'm going to become their arch-nemesis, the Matlock Bandit, who perpetrates his crimes only when that most famous of television lawyers is working his mojo and his legions of fans are using their telekinesis to turn up the volume.

i must reach down and touch my testicles 50 times over the course of your average day. it's not sexual...it's more a paternal thing. i just want to make sure they're okay, help them with any problems they're having, and let them know they can confide in me without fear of judgement.

i'm thinking about picking up and taking off. all through college, situations were such that between dorms apartments and internships, that i'd be moving in to a new place every four months. it didn't make me a man of the world certainly (i never even left the eastern seaboard), but the constant influx of new people, lifestyles, and street addresses kind of agreed with me.

and now i don't know. i've made a big stink about staying in the same place, unchanged, and how that sucks...but there's plenty of good shit that goes along with it, shit that can only be attained after a certain amount of time is invested. i've got a quality pool of friends here, plenty of reasonable companies know me and would hire me if i needed a job...i like my neighborhood and my living situation, one of the Greatest People on the Fucking Planet lives right upstairs (and that's a short list, let me tell you). i was lonely and shiftless when i first got here, but Boston really provided for me when i gave her a chance.

but wanderlust, you know? it might not make any sense, but even rationalizing it down to nothing doesn't make it easy to ignore. it's pretty simple really: i need to get fat and happy, or i need to keep moving. this area in between is quite unsettling.

seated on barstool, eric leans back casually in to a wall covered with the crudely engraved jokes, greetings, and initials of patrons past. he muses to mark,

greg's behavior is just too far out there these days, even for him. it's not a coincidence, it means something...it's obviously indicative of something larger.

he looks thoughtful for a moment, as if considering the impact of his own words...then appears to have an epiphany. he slyly points to his crotch.

oh, there it is.

and now, another edition of T.O.   I.M.P.L.Y. (Things Overheard In My Presence Lately...Yeah)

• i'll give you a million dollars to burn my nipples.
• M&M's...melt in your mouth....AND your ass!
• why don't we just put the whole thing inside an emu?

i'm writing tonight.

i'm going to be back for a little while...i made myself a little mid-february resolution and i try to be a man of my (internal) word. it's been altogether too long and i'm afraid i'll be clunky and awkward and i'll grind the gears a little getting in to second, but hopefully it's not gone. hopefully there's still spark enough to spout a few run-on sentences of smug pretense.

i'm not a big fan of playing catch-up, there'll be no 15 second, episode-opening short "last time, on Eric's Life". but if i had to characterize this chunk of time and moreover, the roughly three year block since i've left school in which it is contained...i'd probably throw my head back and let my tongue vibrate out a low, gutteral purring. that, ladies and gentlemen, is the sound of a life in neutral. living situation, relationships with women, job satisfaction, the size of my bank account, height weight haircolor and the rest of the show's components...minor fluctuations only, we're still right where we started. i'm not feeling especially -panicked- by this realization...but it's getting ever harder to ignore the weight of grander schemes. it's like getting flattened by a steamroller, feet first; you can blithely sip tea and read Cosmo, but pretty soon that beast is going to make it's way on to some vital organs (or even more vital genetalia) and you're going to have to sit up and take notice. heh, that's me, not even panicked crushed up to my knees by a steamroller.

unneccessarily complicated and and not altogether cohesive analogies aside...it's okay. but yeah, it's time to get started.

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maybe a link or two...

my very very good friends Leslie and Jonas had a baby, Dixie. i'm pretty sure Dix is going to be the savior of humanity in one form or another (jesus, bill and ted, or mad max?)...because the offspring of two people of their caliber could do no less.

i kicked over a whole can of shitworms by casually entering this contest on boston.com a few weeks ago and not sucking. i'm not looking forward to whoring myself at the Rack next week but that said...vote for me, a 500 dollar first place purse would go a long way towards getting me that baby jesus buttplug i've always wanted.

i'm in a funk. you know this only because i tell you...otherwise it looks just like my regular routine of sitting around doing nothing. i'm fighting with a friend and i work too much and more than anything these days, world events just piss me off. it never used to be this way. it used to be that the only thing that could penetrate my Apathy Armor (tm) was a well-placed shell from the battle cruiser group Immediate Family. but somewhere along the line it all just got very personal.

maybe i've read one too many comic books...began believing that one man COULD make a difference and the reality of the situation isn't sitting so well. i've thought that perhaps i've come to a new level of awareness or understanding; but i can almost hear myself getting stupider day by day, so i find that answer highly unlikely. it could be the evil now is more odious, more diabolical than it's ever been before...but again, i doubt it, history is filled with villains more sinister (and certainly smarter) than our current cast of players. maybe it's a territory thing...i'm alive now, it's my turn to safeguard the world, and i'll be damned if any unctuous statesmen are going to spin lies of convenience and spill the blood of the innocent. not on my watch, buster...it's going to be nothing but lilacs and birds chirping and strangers hugging eachother for no reason at all. hmm, could be.

so religion's a thing with me. i was raised protestant, bullshitted my way through confirmation, and became a full-fledged christian sometime in my mid-teens. these days, i'll often characterize myself semi-seriously as a heretic.

the bad stuff about religion is very easy to point out. the good stuff is equally easy to recognize, which i guess is why it's always been one of the most contentious points in human history. myself, i've always had a love/hate relationship with her. whenever my aptitude for critical thought began, i realized she could be broken down in to two main parts: the beliefs, and the rules. the rules i love. the rules, the practical application of the whole shebang...this is some good stuff. loving thy neighbor, practicing peace, seeing to the needs of the less fortunate. bonding communities together, church-funded food pantries and housing programs, acting as a place of solitude and reflection for anyone who needs it...these are wonderful things than can only enrich our lives.

it's the beliefs part that always puts me off. the beliefs part is so dangerous because essentially it boils down to Justification...that's capital J Justification, ladies and gentlemen. when you've got the almighty so-and-so backing your actions, it's pretty hard to see yourself in the wrong. the euphoria of knowing you're part of some greater plan clouds you up and you're unable to evaluate your actions like a plain old moral human being any longer...and before you know it we're all killing one another to impress invisible superheroes in outer space. or we're electing regular fallible, flawed human beings to positions of surrogate god-dom, letting them dictate the course of our lives without question and letting them put their hands all over our children. it's when you stop living the words and set out instead to prove that you're right...and suddenly the world is populated with infidels.

so i'm done thinking out loud for now.